Replies to post #23782 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[alan81]

No price war...
Intel has not dropped prices since October 26...
http://www.intel.com/intel/finance/pricelist/
I don't call doing a price drop every 3 months a price war. The referenced Article:
http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article2.asp?datePublish=2004/01/20&pages=A8&seq=50
shows the price of the 2.8Ghz product dropping to match the 2.6Ghz products. This is simply a moving of the minimum speed up a bin, from 2.6 to 2.8Ghz.

The fairly stiff price competition we saw a few years back was caused by the coincidence of a couple of factors; the market was very soft so both Intel and AMD had ample factory capacity, and AMD market share was moving up toward and beyond 20%. Today, the market is growing rather than contracting, and with the large die size of the hammer AMD is not able to gain significant market share until 90nm. This is enough to convince me there will not be a "price war", or more accurately described as significant price moves downward, until AMD released 90nm in volume. Intel has absolutely nothing to gain right now by dropping prices below the optimal for "monopoly" pricing.
--Alan